given the same gestures we arrived at different conclusions you kissed my girl twice you bastard

but even when you frighten me

we still break bread in the European Union’s halls

& ask poets to love unconditionally

& use words as sex toys, so the pressure

of bodies on other bodies seems appropriate

but Henry, fuck it man, all the barbarians

are on coffee breaks

meanwhile, the wave is holding its trendy shirt

and the unbuttoned button of the ant farm future

the sea re-structured its public image

and left me with an orange to peel

a desperate bottom line of reason

exercising my semantic rights, i know

something will eventually never happen

yet be careful buddy, we stayed in the thick traffic

waiting for a new future with its in-depth manual

on the merits of describing sanity

without the silliness of memories creeping up

i can prove that there is a correlation between

the shape of winter and our massive hopelessness

so i keep playing it safe & disregard the traffic

in order to keep the pictures of my loved ones near

in my backup plan the body disintegrates

the great memo maker notebook:

— minimize contact with your environment

— pick an alliance with the night; the morning is safe by definition

— prepare for the urban scene: a body is a pre-condition for lust

the robots mark the street as if we aren’t going anywhere and all the kissing business is not just a façade

our designated driver took notes while alive

but the narrator is the one who was given immunity for keeping a precise offset from reality

while building a prayer from to-do lists

now that we satisfied the god of statistics

we promise we will protect your privacy, yet give you back your exact change

Maged Zaher

Maged Zaher was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt and came to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree in Engineering. His English poems have appeared in magazines such as Columbia Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Tinfish, and others. He has two chapbooks, ‘speculations on a second weather’, and ‘the wholesale approach’, and has taught poetry workshops in the Seattle area. Some of his translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry are forthcoming in Talisman and Banipal.

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